Jorge Luis Prats Soca

Concert pianist and internationally recognized professor.

He was born in Central Violeta, in Camagüey. He began studies in music theory, solfège and piano at the Conservatorio Fernández Vilá, in Havana, with Bárbara Díaz Alea, who had herself been a student of César Pérez Sentenat.

In 1971 he entered the Escuela Nacional de Arte (Cubanacán), where he was a student of Margot Rojas and later of Frank Fernández, who provided him with a solid technical foundation and a broad understanding of art.

In Paris he received lessons from Brazilian pianist Magda Tagliaferro, who introduced him to the works of Heitor Villa-Lobos and Arthur Rubinstein.

At the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Viena he was a student of Paul Badura-Skoda, a specialist in the interpretation of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Frank Schubert, who introduced him to Beethoven's original scores and encouraged him to research.

At the Moscow Conservatory he worked with Rudolf Kerer, who had him study in detail the works of Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninov and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and taught him to analyze the structure of the works he performed and to know their composers.

Jorge Luis Prats has natural gifts for the instrument; however, the most significant aspect of him is his ability for what is called "thinking in music."

He has won numerous awards, starting with the first prize in the Amadeo Roldán Competition for intermediate piano students, in 1975. At the XVII International Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition, in Paris, -with a jury composed of Tony Aubin, president, Magda Tagliaferro, Maria de Freitas Branco, Paul Badura-Skoda and Witold Malcuzinsky-, he won, unanimously, the Grand Prix, as well as the Chevillon-Bonnaud awards, as best interpreter of French music, with the "Scarbó," from the work Gaspard of the Night, by Maurice Ravel, which consists of three parts: "Ondine," "Le Gibet" and "Scarbó." This work has every kind of technical difficulty, and especially appeals to the performer's imagination. The results of the Competition were announced at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, on July 16, 1977. In the competition, Prats also performed Concerto No. 1 for piano and orchestra, Étude No. 7, op. 10, and Fantasy in F minor, by Frédéric Chopin; Concerto No. 1, for piano and orchestra, and Études, by Franz Liszt, and Cinq danses rituelles, the competition's required piece, by André Jolivet. Jolivet's dances, highly complex, have a polytonal structure and some serial elements that result in very specific music; in performing them, Prats received the approval of the jury and the author's family.

He has been accompanied by the Sinfónica de Tours orchestras, of the Loire regions, and by the Pasdeloup Concert Association, in Paris. In 1991, at Guildford Guildhall, he garnered the warmest praise from critics.

Prats appeared, along with Paul Badura-Skoda and Jorg Demus, in the film The History of the Piano, on four occasions. In the first he played Franz Liszt – with Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2-, on a piano from the author's era, which obliged him to learn the ways in which nineteenth-century instruments were played. He also performed The Delights of Rosita and The Dolls, by Cuban Ignacio Cervantes, and accompanied Uruguayan singer Graciela Nasser, first soloist of the Teatro Colón, in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York (United States), who performed Nhapopé, by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Jorge Luis Prats' repertoire is made up of works by Manuel Saumell, Ignacio Cervantes, Ernesto Lecuona, Carlos Fariñas, Harold Gramatges and Leo Brouwer, Cubans; Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian, and Europeans Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Alexander Scriabin, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky.

He has performed under the baton of James Lockhart, director of the Philharmonic of the Rhine (West Germany); with the London Philharmonic Orchestra; with Enrique Bátiz, director of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico; with Manuel Duchesne Cuzán, director of the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba; Tomás Fortín, guest director of the National Symphonic and Santiago de Cuba orchestras, and Guido López Gavilán, leading the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba.

As a pedagogue, he has taught at the Escuela Nacional de Arte and at the University of Santander, Colombia.

He has toured Colombia, Bolivia, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Canada, France, England, Ireland, Holland, Spain, West Germany, Austria, the Soviet Union, Poland and Japan.

Prats' sonorous power is impressive, his musicality and intelligence are overwhelming. The sensitivity and versatility that he displays from the keyboard also stand out. He seems like an orchestra. He is currently regarded as one of the best pianists in the world, as a great virtuoso.

Since 2006 he has received support from Patrons of Exceptional Artists.

He has recorded for a significant number of record labels: Pathé Marconi (EMI France), Deutsche Grammophon, ASV, IMP, and Musical Heritage. His discography includes the first recording of the 24 Preludes and the Satanic Poem by A. Scriabin by EMI France, works by Beethoven, Grieg's Piano Concerto, Rachmaninov's complete work for piano and orchestra, the Chopin concertos and a wide variety of Cuban and Spanish music.

In early 2012 Prats inaugurated the Miami Piano Festival season with two different marathon programs in one day on March 4 and performed his fourth consecutive recital at the Concertgebouw. He has performed regularly at the Miami International Piano Festival since his debut in 2007. The Piano Masters series is proud to present this wonderful artist in his Boston debut in 2012.

After a long and discrete career -most of the time in his native country-, the spotlight illuminated him in 2007, when piano promoter Marco Riaskoff received some DVDs whose disturbing fragments circulate on YouTube with unusual activity.

He immediately began to share the program with figures such as Pollini, Zimerman or Barenboim and left behind the obscurity of the orchestral pits where his piano once accompanied Alicia Alonso. Today he lives in Miami, but half of Europe is calling for him.